I am an imposter in these parts, but since attending the #SMIR conference on Thursday, I’ve abandoned my usual platform (my job seeking blog), to take over Dave’s blog to give my two-penneth on social media.

First of all I have to say what an absolutely fantastic day it was; The speakers were great and the venue and turnout was just excellent. Thanks to Mike for putting on such a wonderful event (and making all of the presentations available to delegates). I finally got the chance to put faces to the Twitter accounts that I have been following for such a long time. It was quite surreal to have so many of my Twitter ‘following list’ all in one place!

Social Media is something that I am really interested in and passionate about, but there is so much noise and hot air around the subject, that it can be an incredibly tiresome learning curve. The web is filled with people pertaining to be experts in the field; so many authoritative voices in such a new and changing space, and it’s sometimes difficult to filter out the fluff from the real knowledge that there is to be gained.

I am pleased to say that at the Social Media in Recruitment conference, this was the opposite; less noise, more real information, and as well as all of the expert advice- real success stories. Tangible results from people that had tried, and succeeded in incorporating social media into their business who are gaining real results. I very much enjoyed hearing about Jonathan and Elkie’s success and the challenges they faced to get there.

Here at AllTheTopBananas we are passionate about social media and the mobile web- two fantastic resources for reinforcing brand presence across multiple platforms, for communicating and interacting with users and clients, and for staying at the forefront of innovation in a competitive marketplace.

There is still a lot to learn. While we take a proactively personal approach to our customer service- responding without automation to all user queries to give our job seekers the best possible experience, I was still hiding behind our company logo on Twitter, and not introducing myself to the world! I have since cast off my robotic shell, and will be using a real picture of myself from now on, to make sure that my online presence is as friendly and approachable as I am when I’m in my banana t-shirt at conferences!

There are 5.5 million UK users of Twitter, and the two fastest growing demographic groups are: 18-34 year olds (45%) and 35-49 year olds (24%) Stat courtesy of Andy Headworth’s Twitter presentation.

In March, Facebook surpassed Google in terms of traffic to their website, for the first time. The site has over 400 million users worldwide and over 100 million mobile users. Stats courtesy of Peter Gold’s Facebook presentation.